Sony launches Music Unlimited streaming music service in the U.S.

2011 seems like it’ll be the year that music streaming really hits it big. Spotify is seemingly only months from launching in the United States; services like MOG, Rhapsody and Rdio are on the rise in popularity; and even iTunes is suspected of leaping into the cloud sooner rather than later.

You can add another streaming music service to the list of options Americans will have available to them: Sony’s terribly branded service “Music Unlimited powered by Qricocity” (or Music Unlimited for short). Like the competition, it will offer users the ability to pay a $10 a month fee and listen to as much music as they want.

Unlike the competition though? Don’t expect to listen to Music Unlimited on your smartphone or to load it up on a PMP. You’re tethered to your computer or PlayStation 3.

If that seems like a crummy deal to you, it is. All of the competition allows you to bring your music on the road with you in one way or another. But Music Unlimited doesn’t do that. Instead, Sony expects people to listen to Music Unlimited either on their computers, or on their PS3s or Sony-brand televisions.

Madness, of course. Music is becoming increasingly portable and increasingly private. In all likelihood, then, the issue is a technical one… so it doesn’t surprise me that Sony is already telling Peter Kafka over at All Things D that it should eventually make its way to mobile through an Android app eventually.